Towards a paperless business

Daniel Lucarini is the Senior Director of Marketing for Captaris Inc. Involved in the electronic document management industry for over 13 years, he was one of the founders of Information Management Research, makers of the popular Alchemy document management product that was acquired by Captaris in 2004. Dan is a long-time member of AIIM International, the ECM association and ARMA International, the records management professional organisation.

CXO. For the purposes of an introduction, please could you give us a bit of information about Captaris?
DL. Captaris Inc. is a leading provider of software products that automate document-centric business processes. Our product suite of Captaris RightFax, Captaris Workflow and Captaris Alchemy Document Management is distributed through a network of technology providers in the United Kingdom, Europe and the rest of the world, and our European headquarters are located in Vianen, the Netherlands. Most CXOs will know of us because RightFax is a very popular product used to automate and protect document delivery at thousands of European organisations.

CXO. What kind of organisation typically needs electronic document management?
DL. The common denominator is a business process where paper documents are heavily involved. Problems faced by the typical customer include:

• Their approval or service process is bogged down by paper.
• New requests or other docs pile-up faster than can be processed in a work day.
• Their revenue, cash flow or reputation are negatively affected by slow paper processes.
• Sharing documents is a costly procedure.
• When the auditors or attorneys come calling, they can’t retrieve the paper records fast enough or, worse, records are lost.
• File cabinets occupy wasted office space that is much needed for business expansion.

CXO. What are some of the benefits of implementing a ‘paperless’ business process?
DL. Organisations that use electronic document management will speed up task completion times (sometimes by a factor of 10 or more), add accountability and visibility to every step of the process, enforce the organisation’s rules and processes, reduce human errors by automating data entry and filing, and empower the knowledge workers to actually do their knowledge work, instead of wasting time on menial, paper-shuffling tasks.

CXO. With all the document management technologies available for so many years, we are surprised to hear that paper is still a problem. Why is that?
DL. Yes, you would think that every business process would have gone paperless by now! But nothing could be further from the reality. In a September 2005 report, the Gartner Group revealed that less than five percent of organisations that could benefit from a fusion of documents and processes have actually implemented a solution. Working closely with customers over the years, we have observed that there are three ‘myths’ that can keep an organisation from proceeding.

• We can’t afford it. There is a widespread perception that ‘business process management’ must cost at least €1 million and require four consultants who will upset the entire business for 18 months! Thus only the largest multi-nationals or government agencies can do it. However this is no longer the case with new solutions on the market today. Literally any size of organisation can now afford to get in on this.
• No one will use it. Even if we could afford it, our end-users will not utilize it because the software does not sufficiently emulate the way they are used to working. ‘Solution abandonment’ by end-users has been a real issue, but this is no longer the case with new products from vendors such as Captaris.
• Paperless is an impossible dream anyway – why pursue it? True, paper documents will be with us for many more years, not the least because of records retention requirements and the ongoing need for ‘analog’ signatures on contracts. But it is very possible to eliminate the paper from the steps of an internal business process and take advantage of the desired productivity efficiencies. Proof of this is found in many case studies at www.captaris.com.

CXO. What advice do you have for the CXO?
DL. Have you done an audit to find out how many paper-centric business processes still exist in your organisation? You may be surprised to discover some inefficiencies that are bleeding your productivity and cash and that can easily be eliminated. Look for electronic document management solutions that also maximize your investment in Microsoft IT infrastructure. This is a good strategy that will help you to contain costs, maximize end user participation, and insure a future growth path into service-oriented architectures (SOA).

For further information, please contact: danlucarini@captaris.com